I would literally read the phone book if David Joy wrote it.  The way he can spin a tale is next to none.  I LOVED that this book was part police procedural, part study of humanity in the grips of addiction but also the grips of small town change.
Mountains had me clutching my heart, holding my breath and wincing as each character tried to do what was best by any means, even if those means weren’t necessarily better than the crime committed against them.
When I read Joy’s book I always love each character, even the bad ones.  He writes with such a vivid imagery and creates such a realistic atmosphere that it’s like a movie playing in my head.
I will devour anything he writes!

Always a pleasure to read the beautiful writings of Joy. Atmospheric and dark, he blows it out of the water every time.

This book is easily in the Top 5 books I have read this year.  David Joy has a way with words and I am so happy to have been given an opportunity to read his book. I am definitely going to be reading his backlist.

The story takes place in Western North Carolina in the Appalachian Mountains. Drug trading is rampant in the hills. It explores the drug addiction Denny Rattler has been struggling to overcome for years and how far a father is willing to go for his son, but also the relationships that intertwine the events.  Sometimes our choices really do change everything.

I loved Ray Mathis' character. Sometimes parents give up on their kids, but he never once gave up on Denny. The emotions felt so real. 

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and G.P. Putnam's Sons for the #gifted copy of this book.

I don’t think it’s possible for David Joy to write anything but five-star novels! I just love his voice. I love his stories. I love southern horror/thriller books. There aren’t a ton, but David Joy is the best at it! This one is no exception. Thought the characters were so real. The portrayal of addiction in the deep south mountains seems so accurate and real. I haven’t lived in the south or been an addict, but it seems that way to me. And the ending of this book is heart wrenching. David has a way with words for sure.

David Joy is one of my auto-buy authors. His grit-lit fiction always touches me in unexpected ways. The Line That Held Us, his previous release (my review), was one of my Best Books of 2018, so my expectations were high for When These Mountains Burned. Taking place in eastern North Carolina in the fall of 2016, this is the story of a community ravaged by drugs, first by meth and more recently by heroin. They’re everywhere: on tribal lands, in small, quaint towns, in homes with wealth, in homes struck by poverty. At a glance, addicts recognize themselves in the faces of others; they get each other’s pain.

“It had never been that addicts didn’t care whether they lived or died, it was that the feeling you were chasing rested right against the brink and sometimes you just fell over.”

In this setting, Joy tells a story of a father’s grief and need for revenge as he watches his 41-year old son, unable to fight his life-long addiction. He introduces the reader to another addict who truly wants a different life, but has no idea how to escape his body’s cravings. Mixed in with these characters are a group of cops/DEA agents fighting an uphill battle, ruthless drug dealers, and fires raging all around. Even though I shed a few tears near the end of When These Mountains Burned, for me it didn’t have quite the emotional impact of The Line That Held Us. Instead, Joy’s powerful writing left me feeling haunted by the legacy of addiction that our country just can’t seem to kick.

Thanks to G.P. Putnam’s Sons for print and electronic copies of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on August 18, 2020

When These Mountains Burn is a literary suspense novel that carefully balances plot and characterization. The novel offers a granular examination of Appalachian lives plagued by addiction and loss. The story focuses on a few key characters who are caught in a clash between cultural values that have long informed the region and the drug culture that swallows residents who see vanishing opportunities and have little hope for a better life.

There were good times in Ray Mathis’ life, but it hurts too much to remember them. His wife is dead and his adult son Ricky is a junkie. Ray retired from the Forest Service with an injury and a small settlement. He spends his last $10,000 to save his son from a drug dealer who is holding him hostage for an unpaid debt.

Ray is from a generation that “never had much use for the law.” People in the mountains took care of their own problems. In Ray’s opinion, if someone who deserved rough justice came up missing or got burned out of a house, it would be a mistake to call that lawlessness. “These mountains used to have their own kind of order,” Ray laments. He will eventually take justice into his own hands — a decision that irritates but doesn’t surprise the deputy sheriff who is like a daughter to him — but Ray won’t be pleased with the result of his actions.

Ray is a decent man who endures the changes that have vanquished the kind of self-sufficient life that men of his generation value. Ray feels emotions strongly but lacks the ability to express them. He knows that the strong silent man is actually a weak man, weakened by his inability to speak the truth in his heart.

A second character who gets a fair amount of attention is Rodriquez, an undercover agent who works with the DEA. Taking advantage of the assumption that “men who looked like Rodriguez were drug dealers and rapists,” the DEA uses Rodriguez to gather information about a high-level dealer who uses the Cherokee reservation as a refuge from surveillance.

The third key character, and in some respects the most important of the trio, is Denny Rattler. Denny is a heroin addict and small-time thief who steals enough to pay for his next fix. Denny finds himself in a motel room with a group of addicts, tries to save a man’s life, and is beaten for his trouble. Throughout the story, Denny has serious intentions of cleaning himself up. As is generally true of addicts, he always manages to find a reason to set his good intentions aside in favor of the needle. Even his love for his sister is less compelling than the need to chase the perfect high.

David Joy tells his story in an honest and straightforward prose style that suits the novel's atmosphere. His plot builds suspense as gritty characters circle each other in a dance that brings them closer to destruction. The story gains credibility from its relative simplicity. It is violent without becoming brutal or gratuitous. The ending is satisfying but not artificially happy.  Whether any character will internalize the novel’s traumatic events and emerge as a better person is unclear, although Joy doesn’t foreclose that possibility. Life is hard and the future is uncertain, but perseverance — the novel seems to suggest — carries the possibility of reward, even if it is not the reward we seek or expect.

RECOMMENDED

I didn’t think that this book was as wonderful as some of the author’s other books, but it is still very good. Although I am not all that fond of reading about drug addicts or dealers, I thought the author did a good job of showing the impact of drugs on segments of the population. People seem to be caught in an endless loop.  I particularly felt for Raymond Mathis who ran out of options to help his 41 year old son. This author writes beautifully and creates believable characters and excellent dialog. If you haven’t read him before you might want to start with  “The Line that Held Us” or “The Weight of this World”. His books are grit lit with fewer cliches than usual. 

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

The below 4.5-star review was posted to Hillbilly Highways, Amazon, and Goodreads on 8/19/20:

When These Mountains Burn may be David Joy’s best novel yet.  Fires are burning across the mountains of North Carolina in late 2016, and wildfire smoke casts a heavy pall over even the unburned areas.  More figurative fires are burning as well, with an equally heavy pall cast by the opioid epidemic.  Those figurative fires will touch Ray, a mountain of a man, a retired forester, and the father of an addict, and Denny Rattler, an addict himself, a petty thief, and a Cherokee.  

(If you heard about these fires on the news, and you probably didn’t, it was likely only when they hit Gatlinburg.)

“The way these mountains have been burning, I knew there was some kind of end coming.  I knew it.  I just couldn’t see it.  I come here to kill you.”

The use of the fires as a literary device is both obvious and effective.  Coyotes provide a minor literary device, with Ray ruminating that “he’d watched mountain people and culture be damn near extirpated over the course of a few decades, while those dogs had been persecuted for a century and thrived.”

The previous two David Joy novels I read both took place in Jackson County.  Ray lives in Jackson County and much of the action takes place there, but the Qualla Boundary, home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and only partially in Jackson County, also features prominently.  Ray’s son Ricky is in trouble with drug dealers in a remote part of the Qualla Boundary known as the Cove.  The actions of all three parties will light a match to enough dry tinder to pull in any number of law enforcement officers and addicts, including Denny.

When These Mountains Burn is a reminder that, while much has changed in the Qualla Boundary, there is still plenty that ain’t.

“The main drag through Cherokee was an odd juxtaposition, a run-down tourist town sprinkled with new construction.  Growing up here, before the casino, there had only been the former, and there had always been a part of Denny that was ashamed by the way they sold themselves—stores peddling leather tomahawks with brightly dyed feathers strung from the handles; cheesy beadwork of birds and fishes sewn into change purses made in Vietnam; neon signs and trifold brochures showing teepees like they were some Plains tribe who were not of these mountains at all.
…
“Cherokee was another place now.  The casino had changed everything.  All the mom-and-pop shops peddling projectile points and dream catchers were fading away.  The children were learning and speaking a language that had once been washed with soap from their grandparents’ mouths.  There were native words on all the new buildings and signs, words that twenty years before had been on the brink of extinction.  There was a renaissance taking place and it shouldn’t filled Denny with pride, but instead it left him feeling empty and ashamed.  He was the one the outsiders pointed to, the drunk Indian, the addict Indian waiting on a per cap check to shoot into his arm.”

I’ve said before and I will say again that I think David Joy has the potential to exceed Ron Rash.  His fiction marries starkly beautiful prose with the raw, real emotion of a mountain people watching the world change around them.  That is something that cannot be replicated or taught.

Judged from a literary perspective, When These Mountains Burn is magnificent, regardless of whether the NYC-centric literati can see it.  From a pulp perspective, the plot is very good but doesn’t quite crackle.  It is a tad predictable and the climax a bit of a letdown.  But, to be fair, this is the rare foible in Rash’s writing as well.  And it is something that can be learned and honed over time.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary, advance copy of When These Mountains Burn from the publisher.

Told from the perspectives of different characters who are connected to Raymond Mathis, a retired Forest Service employee. His son is an addict, a crook and owsn a lot of money to people who don’t take “no for an answer. Its not just a story about a father and his son, but its also a story of how drugs have destroyed rural America. In tis case, its North Carolina. While most definitely a crime novel filled with violence, it’s a peak at what’s happening under our noses in small town across the US.

Hede: An end to everything: David Joy's new novel, 'When These Mountains Burn,' descends into the depth and threat of Appalachia culture

Review and interview published in Mountain Times (Boone, NC)

David Joy is not only one of the most brutally authentic writers working in Appalachia today, his evolving novels are quickly becoming a touchstone for a culture that is on the edge of extermination.

His new work follows the continuum. As with earlier books, “When These Mountains Burn” (Putnam), is populated with broken people making impossible choices that result in tragic outcomes.

But Joy’s fourth work of fiction is about more than these individuals. The lives of Ray Mathis, his addict son, Ricky, and niece and deputy Leah Green, the small-time thief Denny Rattler and DEA agent Ron Holland intersect in a time and place that Joy knows well — the 2016 Tellico fire and the opioid crisis, both consuming Western North Carolina.

Savagely honest, Joy’s story details retired forester Mathis’s decision that, finally, enough is enough as he witnesses his 40-year-old son hit bottom again and again. Ricky steals his dying mother’s pain medication, pawns anything worth of value in the family home and puts Ray in a do-or-die situation in which he must decide between his life savings and his son’s death at the hands of a dealer.

Fleshing out the outcome of that decision is an excellent crime story, but there’s more to that. At its heart, “When These Mountains Burn” isn’t about Ricky, or Ray, the Cherokee Nation or the vengeance that is so critical to the plot. “When These Mountains Burn” is the story behind the progression of what Joy has called “cultural extinction,” told through the reflections of its characters as fire burns tens of thousands of acres of land.
Joy recently agreed to speak with Mountain Times about both those reflections and his new novel. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tom Mayer: Like another great Appalachia writer, Ron Rash — to whom you dedicate this book to as “mentor and friend” — place is critical to your novels. What is it that keeps you coming back to this region in your writings?

David Joy: I’ve said this a lot in the past, but it’s the truth and that’s that I just don’t know anything else. I write very specifically about Jackson County, N.C., which is where I live. It’s a particular part of Appalachia, in that this isn’t coal country. This isn’t Eastern Kentucky or West Virginia. This isn’t even Macon County or Haywood County, our neighbors to the west and east. People get the notion that you can talk about the region as a whole, as this singular thing, and maybe some folks can, but I’m not trying to do that. I’m trying to capture what’s just off the porch. I’m writing about one small place and it’s because I know it well.

TM: You detail the opioid crisis of Western North Carolina and Appalachia with great validity, and you specifically use the words “these mountains” in the title. Is the problem worse here, or is the novel more of an example to spotlight a national concern?

DJ: A lot of my novels’ titles have been phrased that way — this world, these mountains — and it goes back to that first answer in that I’m writing about a very specific place. As far as Appalachia as a region with respect to the opioid crisis, yes, absolutely it’s been worse here. All you have to do is look up a distribution map of where the majority of prescription opioids were sent in this country, and this region, these mountains show up like a bruise. This place was systematically targeted by Purdue Pharma. That’s not something that’s up for debate. There was a geography to how these drugs were distributed. There were 42,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2016, and of the five states with the highest number, four of those five were in Appalachia.

TM: You use the Tellico fire as a metaphor in the story — following a news report, Ray even muses that “maybe it would be better if the whole world burned away into nothing” — but it’s also a very real presence. Beyond using the fire as a way to timestamp the story, is wildfire a growing threat? An environmental cause for alarm?

DJ: I set this story very specifically in the fall of 2016 because I think that moment in time, for a lot of us, felt like the world was ending. That’s largely what this book is about is about — a group of characters who feel that they are witnessing an end to everything they’ve ever known. But, yes, wild fire is absolutely a growing threat. Environmental disaster is a growing, looming, inevitable threat. As climate change continues to create more and more drastic weather patterns, these sorts of extremes are just going to worsen. With regards to the fires specifically, I think we’ve mismanaged a lot of forests here in the east, and by mismanaged I mean that we’ve had little to no management for decades. There hasn’t been timber harvest. There hasn’t been prescribed burns. What we’ve got is 30 years of fuel built up. So you have an incredibly dry year like we had in 2016, it’s inevitable. We’re sitting on a giant tinderbox. 

TM: Certainly one way of reading the novel is about Ray’s quest for vengeance, the opioid crisis and the environmental damage that threatens life today. But in tying these things together, they drive what you’ve called “cultural extinction.” As you write in this book: “It wasn’t just a matter of economics. It wasn’t the drugs. It was an abandonment of values. It was trading work for convenience. It was marking the nearest Starbucks as a place more important than the front porch.” That’s a powerful statement. Is this where we’re headed, or are we already at the point of no return?

DJ: I think we’re long past the point of no return. We’re a generation away from cultural extinction. And that’s not just an Appalachian reality, that’s a rural reality. 

TM: I’m wondering, though, where the blame lies for this cultural evolution? Is it solely on a new generation that greedily wants more and with less effort than their parents had, or is that older generation also guilty with its best intentions? Again, from the book: “Those who stayed raised their children to do better. They told them to go to college. They told them to get an education so that they could find a good job, one that didn’t leave their hands callused, their skin cracked, their bones broken and mended. We don’t want you to have to work like we did. That was what they said and it was a noble thought with an ominous end. Instead of remaining rooted to the place that carried their name, they took their names with them when they left.” Are we today misguidedly eradicating our own culture?

DJ: It’s certainly not a new generation. This isn’t a new problem. This is a product of placing dollars ahead of people for 250 years. As far as addressing what’s happening specifically where I live, so speaking in terms of Western North Carolina and more specifically Jackson County, it’s rural gentrification that’s directly tied to an unwillingness to recognize tourism as an extractive economy. For decades they’ve shoved tourism down our throats like it was our savior, like there would be no consequence. We’re being priced out. We’re becoming bedroom communities for larger, more urban centers.

And that’s something that’s just going to worsen as working remotely becomes more commonplace. For a long time I’ve been very adamant about rural connectivity, so broadband, being key to leveling the playing field in a growingly online economy. But the truth is, the minute we get that connectivity all we’ve really done is made it easier for outside wealth to move in. The median price of a home in San Francisco is $1.3 million. Why would someone pay that for a home to fight traffic everyday for an hour if they could live in a place like this on a hundred acres and do their job remotely? In the end, the history of every place is a story of displacement, and right now it’s mountain people who are experiencing that turning of the tide.

TM: Another powerful statement in the novel comes from your epigraph, “I love the helpless people I loved,” from the poem by the Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Maurice Manning. But the next part of that verse and ensuing stanzas you don’t include: “That’s what a little boy will do, but a grown man will turn it all to sadness and let it soak his heart until he wrings it out and dreams about another kind of love.” Ray and other grownups struggle with memories and reflections throughout the novel. At the end of the book in what sets up a passage from there to the end — and that made me think I had wandered wonderfully into a Thomas Wolfe novel — is this, “There was a forever that came from the remembering, and that single thought struck Raymond Mathis as the most beautiful thing his mind had ever conjured.” Are our feelings of memories forever tied to the past, or do they shift based the decisions, actions and outcomes we experience today?

DJ: I think we’re nostalgic creatures by nature. What separates us from every other animal on the planet is that above all else we are storytellers. As long as the words are spoken there is no end. That’s a powerful, powerful thing. The story may be as close as we can come to immortality.

David Joy writes some of the best Grit Lit published in the U.S. of A, and if you haven’t read him yet, it’s time to get started. This soaring, wrenching tale of addiction, community dysfunction, and miserable unrelenting poverty delivers some hard truths about the distribution of wealth in this country, and about the uneven way that justice plays out. Lucky me, I read it free and early; my thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam Penguin for the review copy. It’s for sale today. 

Ray Mathis is a big man with a big burden. His wife, Doris, has been dead for three years, but his grief hasn’t ebbed. A stoic man, he goes in and out of every day carrying out necessary tasks, but he feels as if his arm is missing, all the time. His companionship comes solely from his old hunting beagle, Tommy Two-Ton. His only child is Ricky, and although Ricky is in his forties, Ray still thinks of him as “the boy.” When the boy comes home, Ray is suffused with a sense of dread. Ricky is a hardcore addict, and all those stories you were told in junior high health class are true: a junkie has no loyalties and no shame great enough to override his need for the substance he’s come to crave. When he sees that Ricky is home for a visit, Ray’s first instinct is to check his few valuables that haven’t been stolen and pawned yet to see if they’ve vanished. 

Is this all too familiar to some of you? Because it hit close to home for me. 

Not long after he arrives, Ricky is gone again, and that’s not unusual; but later he gets a phone call from someone he doesn’t know. The caller says that Ricky has failed to meet a payment and will die if Ray doesn’t pay up. Because Ricky has no shame, he has told them exactly how much is in his father’s savings account. And though he understands that it’s only going to postpone the inevitable, Ray pays up, but he tells the men that collect that he will be back for them if they ever sell to his son again. And when Ricky is back on opiates before he has even recovered from the savage beating administered by the dealer’s goons, Ray tells him, “I’ve thrown you ropes till my arms is give out, and I ain’t got no more to throw.”  	`	``	

Meanwhile, our second protagonist, Denny Rattler, a Cherokee burglar, is arrested and offered treatment for his own addiction, but he declines. It turns out that the very purest heroin is sold on the Cherokee Reservation, and so jurisdictional issues complicate law enforcement. Still worse, there are dirty cops right on the other side of the state line. Denny finds himself in the middle of it all. 

One of the nastiest villains in literature is Walter Freeman, who goes by “Watty.” “I ain’t calling you that,” Ray tells him. “That’s the stupidest fucking name I ever heard.” Ray confronts Watty after his son’s death to deliver some “backwoods justice,” but Watty is entirely unmoved. He doesn’t even remember Ricky. He leaves the individual users to the minions beneath him. He tells the bereaved father, “Your son is small potatoes. They’re all small potatoes. It’s too much of a headache, dealing with junkies.” 

It’s forest fire season in the Appalachian Mountains, and as the conflict between Ray and Watty, between Watty and local law enforcement, and among the addicts, law enforcement and Watty build, a conflagration begins on the reservation, encompassing the “Outlet Mall,” where drugs are sold.  The entire ordeal rises to a fever pitch that leaves me sitting forward, as if the outcome is just beyond my physical reach. At one point I am sure everyone will die, and I tell myself I’ll be okay as long as nothing happens to Tommy Two-Ton. 
What Joy does with the conclusion is tremendously satisfying. When I reviewed his last book, I felt as if he had wimped out on the ending, but this time it’s rock solid. It isn’t predictable, yet there are no new people or facts introduced at the last minute to prevent us from foreseeing the outcome, either. 

In fact, this may be his best book yet. 

I’ll offer a final word about genre. This book is billed as Crime Fiction, and that’s not how I see it. I consider this novel to be gritty Southern Fiction at its finest. The fact that it happens to involve crime as an integral part of the story is almost beside the point. But call it what you will, this book is one of the year’s best, and you should get it and read it.

This was the first book I've read by David Joy, but it won't be the last. He paints the perfect picture of how drug use has affected families everywhere and how the drug trade has infiltrated even the most remote rural backroads. But he also teaches enduring love of family and nature even in the midst of great change. While it's a serious story, I really enjoyed the southernisms with some underlying wit and I'm hoping that that's a storytelling trait that carries over into Mr Joy's other books. That coupled with his obvious love of nature makes it so comfortable, familiar and enjoyable to read, like going home after being away for years. I'll be vacationing in his mountain area soon and hope to visit the bookstore in Sylva mentioned in this story to stock up on more books by David Joy.

Published at BookBrowse.Com, 2020-08-12
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr265024

David Joy's When These Mountains Burn explores the human cost of the illegal drug trade in Appalachia.
When These Mountains Burn by David Joy revolves around an illegal narcotics operation in rural North Carolina. When Ray Mathis retrieves his addict son, Ricky, from a drug dealer — again — he tells the man, "After tonight you don't have any more business with that boy… I don't care if he crawls in here begging, you don't have anything for him." Ray also makes it clear to his son that he won't bail him out again. Both Ricky and the dealer ignore Ray, which results in an epic battle between a stern yet loving father and a dangerous drug kingpin in remote Appalachia. Additional characters on both sides of the law become entangled in the story, including Denny Rattler, a junkie who wants to turn his life around but seems powerless to do so.

The author uses multiple plot threads to set up the action, focusing at times on the dealers and addicts, and at others on the law enforcement agencies trying to shut the operation down. The most captivating story lines by far, though, are those stemming from Ray's and Denny's points of view. Joy's writing is superb as he brings these two compelling men to life; through them, the author demonstrates deep empathy for those impacted by addiction — users and their families alike:

There was a thought that settled onto Ray while he stood in the doorway watching the boy, how when an animal has gone lame it is with mercy that the farmer ends the suffering. That thought left a hollow feeling inside him because this was not some horse that had broken a leg… Being the father of an addict, there was always this ambivalence because you'd watched the same thing over and over for years and years, and you knew deep down that there wasn't a thing you could do to stop it. But at the end of the day, that boy curled up in that bed was still your son, and that was always the part that won out.

Ray comes off as a bit of a stock character; he's the cigar-smoking, overall-wearing, tough-on-the-outside-but-soft-on-the-inside hirsute patriarch present in many books, movies and TV shows set in the rural American South — a dead ringer for Uncle Jesse from Dukes of Hazzard. However, the author makes him surprisingly fresh and sympathetic. Denny is a bit less predictable and equally endearing; one can't help but root for him to turn his life around. The rest of the cast — and it's a large one — aren't exactly one-dimensional, but they're not as fleshed out as these two.

The novel is set against the backdrop of the Tellico Fire, one of the Southeastern United States Wildfires that collectively burned some 90,000 acres across five states in October and November of 2016. Although the conflagration itself doesn't play a large part in the action, the smoke and ash it generates are integral to the atmosphere, creating a gloomy, oppressive feel throughout. It also serves as a metaphor for the march of modernity Ray feels is gradually wiping out the area's way of life. The author skillfully weaves the community of Cherokee, North Carolina into the tale as well, vividly describing the tensions between members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (see Beyond the Book), which owns much of the area, and the other residents.

I found the book a bit challenging to get into; the multiple plot lines were confusing at first and it seemed like the only thing they had in common was narcotics. The author also does his readers no favor by giving characters similar-sounding names (Ray/Raymond, Rod/Rodriquez, Ricky, Rudolph, etc.), something I've always found makes a plot more difficult to follow. As the story lines meet up and the narrative point-of-view shifts, characters remain anonymous at first, which added to my confusion (for example, Ricky is nameless for many pages when Denny first encounters him). Also, the drug dealers converse in a jargon with which I was unfamiliar, slowing down my reading as I turned to Google for clarification — for example, I had no idea that "horse" refers to heroin, or that "stamps" are small wax packets of drugs. Once I adapted to the dialogue and the story lines began to converge (at about the halfway point), the book flew along and I ended up enjoying it immensely. Readers who have a page limit by which they decide whether or not to abandon a book may want to invest more patience than normal in this one; it's worth the effort.

I found myself loving When These Mountains Burn by its conclusion, and recommend it to readers who enjoy truly well-written and heartfelt fiction. Its rich, relevant themes surrounding the ravages caused by drug addiction and the slow demise of Appalachian culture are sure to make this one a winner for many, and will undoubtedly draw new fans to David Joy's works. This novel would also make a great book group selection.

"Life was for the living and death was for the dead, and there was enough beauty and grace in both to mend the most tender and broken."

This is my first David Joy book I've read, and I can honestly say I've found an author to add to my favorite author's list. He writes so vividly and lyrical that I felt like I was in the story myself. 

Set in the mountains and on an Indian Reservation called Cherokee in Western North Carolina, where way too many addicts are overdosing and dying from dope they get on the reservation. Ray, a father trying to save his addict son, gets a phone call one night from his son, Ricky, saying people are going to kill him. 

Thinking it's his son trying to get money out of him, he almost hangs up until a man comes on the phone telling him his son owes $10,000 and if it's not paid, they will kill him. 

Once it's paid, Ray tells the dealer to never sell drugs to his son again, or else there will be consequences. 

Intersected is a lawman, who is closing in on the source of the dope and some well-known members of the public who are helping transport the dope. 

Plus another addicted man, who will intersect with Ray and Ricky and blow this story out of the water. 

David Joy does a great job of capturing his character's thoughts and feelings, that gives you a strong connection with each character. I felt a deep connection with each character, and also a personal connection since I used to be an addict myself until 3 years ago when I went to rehab and have been in recovery ever since. So I could feel each of Ricky and Danny's feelings of chasing a high and trying to keep themselves as far away from withdrawing.

Im absolutely in love with how this story is written so graceful and lyrical, but at the same time gritty and blunt. David Joy is an excellent author that will keep you on your toes all while loving every minute of it.

If you're looking for an author who can paint images so vividly in your head when reading their book, David Joy's "When These Mountains Burn" is the book for you. This book may largely have to do with the opiate epidemic and overdoses, but it's also so much more. I promise this will be a 2020 favorite, that you won't want to put down.

I received this book from Penguin Group Putnam via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and fair review.

The opioid epidemic affects people within a community in a variety of ways. There are the addicts who risk life and limb chasing their next high. Family members who have to watch loved ones kill themselves slowly. The dealers who justify their actions because the money that dealing brings into communities. Members at various levels of law enforcement trying to get the big bust for career advancement. Using characters that represents all these different groups, David Joy weaves together a narrative that simultaneously tackles the heartache and the dangers that the epidemic brings into a community. It's a story of love, revenge, family, loss - not just loss of family but the loss of the community itself.

While this book covers a much larger scope compared to David Joy's other books it is easily the most accessible of his books. In both The Weight of This World and The Line That Held Us, the books dealt with a smaller cast of characters over a shorter amount of time. The characters in those books were anti-heroes, people who were dealt a bad hand in life trying desperately to claw their way out by doing despicable things. The characters in this book are much easier to accept, and the choices they make are understandable. The subject matter of the epidemic is already widely discussed and in the public discourse, so there isn't much of a barrier to overcome. We want the father to get revenge on the people who keep dealing to his addict son. We want the addict to overcome his addiction and get some redemption after all those lost years. We want the DEA agents to take down the entire network.

Though all those qualities makes the book easier for people to take in, in some ways it's a less nuanced book. While I understand why the author wouldn't want to write something that "understand and accept all sides" of this situation there are racial implications. One of the dealers does casually mention that the take from the drug sales does benefit a lot of people who need money. Since the dealers in this book are Cherokee dealing on tribal land, I do think it would have been prudent for the author to at least explore that a little further. Especially given how Native Americans have been treated in the past. It's a little problematic in this regard.

The pacing, writing, imagery, and realism of the book are consistently good throughout. Never does the book hit a false note in terms of the story it is trying to tell. He sets up the time frame and scenes perfectly. The wild fires burning, the changing town, the country on the cusp of change. It's 2016 and part of the country is burning down. It's poetic. But his descriptions are so vivid that I can see the scenes and smell the fires. The mood of the nation is captured by the characters.

I had complained in my review of The Line That Held Us that his female characters are screaming out to be as well written as his male characters. And though the women have more prominent roles in this book, Leah being a badass deputy, she's still not as well developed as her male counterparts. It's a shame, because once again, he's so close.

3.5/5 rounds to 4/5.

Joy offers an often dark work of Southern literary fiction in which bubbles of hope emerge. 

Ray, a gruff, tough, burly, stubborn, but kind man, has outlived his beloved wife in the mountains of North Carolina.

He has a precious old girl of a dog, a fascination with (and healthy fear of) coyotes, a love of reading, and a no-nonsense manner that makes clear he doesn't brook fools. He has almost resigned himself to the heartbreaking idea that his addict son is too lost to be saved.  

There's an undercover cop nearby who's trying to help take down a robust drug ring, and then there's Ray, who uses old-fashioned methods and his knowledge of mountain terrain to address injustices in a straightforward way. 

An addict who seems likely beyond redemption offers surprising hope in Joy's When These Mountains Burn. Every choice he makes is to further his chances of snatching the next fix. We live through his desperation and sometimes numb forward trudge toward what feels inevitable. Yet he hesitantly tries to begin reconciling his inner self with his body's cravings; he knows he masks his feelings and guilt with drugs, and he feels a persistent sense of duty and an overreaching pull to protect his sister. He isn't a noble figure; he's a junkie and he steals, lies, and runs, but first he does some version of the right thing over and over again.

It isn't always easy to read, but it isn't over the top, and Joy's characters are fascinatingly faulted and keep you humming right along. I read this in 24 hours while also wishing I were making it last longer. 

David Joy's subject matter and writing style remind me somewhat of Brian Panowich (Hard Cash Valley; Bull Mountain); I love both of their books and am all in for reading their others. 

I received an advance reader's copy of this book from NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons in exchange for an unbiased review.

Over the last year or so, David Joy came on my radar thanks to a massive amount of praise being heaped upon him by fellow reviewers and authors. I had intended to check his work out sooner and bought several of his prior releases, including his Edgar Award finalist for Best Debut, Where All Light Tends to Go (the cover on this thing...good lord, that's a nice one!) and The Line That Held Us, the book that so, so, so many people had been raving. That was at the tail end of 2018, and I still haven't gotten around to reading either of them because publishers keep putting out new stuff and it's hard to keep up, damn them! When I saw Joy's latest on NetGalley, I requested it so that I would have all the incentive I needed to finally dig into the man's work, and lo and behold I got approved.

I see now why so many in my particular circle of readers and reviewers have been so effusive in mentioning the works of David Joy lately (I see you, E., George, and Tracy!), and I am - yet again - kicking myself for not having gotten around to these stories of Appalachian noir sooner. Of course, the good news in circumstances like these is that I at least have the pleasure of catching up now.

When These Mountains Burn is a story of drugs, loss, and revenge set in the mountains of North Carolina. It's been a dry year, though, and these mountains are burning, covering the land in a fog of smoke. It's a dense and gloomy environment for bad things to happen, which is certainly good for readers, and it provides an awesome backdrop for these noir happenings. Raymond Mathis has come into some money following a land sale, but his son is a drug addict with a debt. In order to save Ricky's life, Ray has to pay off the large sum of what Ricky owes. Ray leaves Ricky's drug dealer with a warning, telling the man that if he ever sells anything to Ricky again, Ray will make him pay. Since this is a noir crime story, you can probably guess that Ray's words are not well heeded...

Joy explores the opioid epidemic hitting the rural mountain community Mathis has lived in all his life, unfolding this story through Ray's eyes as an everyman, as well as drug addict Denny (like the restaurant), and DEA Agent Rodriguez. Of the three, I found Ray and Denny to be the most evocatively drawn, and both garnered my sympathies in different ways. I really appreciated Ray's old-school viewpoints on the changing world and how its affected (or perhaps infected) his small corner of the world, and utterly poisoned his relationships with his son. Joy does a fantastic job in this latter regard, capturing the difficulties of being a father of an addict as emotions and ideals war against one another, cycling through ambivalence, compassion, and anger, and you can't help but wonder which feeling is going to win out and push Ray the furthest. 

We get to know these characters so well that some of Joy's writing makes for difficult reading, as he's not one to pull any punches. One scene involving a drug overdose is absolutely unflinching and powerful in its description, and he makes you feel every inch of it. It's potent, heartbreaking stuff.

When These Mountains Burn is a wholly satisfying work of rural noir and a welcome change of pace from the glitz and glamour of more routinely visited settings, like LA or New York. We get a real sense of how the drug trade has impacted this small community and the people that live there, and as a result it feels far more effective and, for me, relatable than a big-city crime caper (although those certainly have their place, too). David Joy is a welcome addition to my canon of noir authors, and I look forward to revisiting his explorations of Appalachian crime through his prior and subsequent books. Consider me a new fan.

WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN
BY DAVID JOY

I am really excited to have received an ARC of David Joy's most recent work called, "WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN." I really loved his first book called, "WHERE ALL THE LIGHT TENDS TO GO," an unforgettable debut first novel that I consider to be one of my all time favorite reads in the last five years. It is hauntingly beautifully written and a book that I will re-read and treasure. I also really loved "THE LINE THAT HELD US." They both have excellent characterizations and are wonderfully suspense driven that is taut with such gripping writing that both can be read in one sitting.

This latest offering of "When These Mountains Burn," was a compelling story that is written in a bit softer voice. The Mountain's of North Carolina are described in hypnotic prose. It is reckoning that a time and place where one has always lived is changing. There are a lot more character's in this latest narrative. I am so grateful to be gifted with an early copy and enjoyed this one as well. I highly recommend it and rate it Five Plus stars.

Publication Date: August 18, 2020

Thank you to Net Galley, David Joy and GP Putnam's Son's--Penguin Group for providing me with my ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#NetGalley #GPPutnam'sSon's--Penguin Group #WhenTheseMountainsBurn #DavidJoy

I’ve read everything David Joy has written and will continue to do so. His writing is both brutal and tender, no small feat. Every page has some gem. In these trying times of COVID-19 pandemic and racial unrest,I was particularly drawn to the following passage near the end of this beautiful little book: “Maybe it would be better if the whole world burned away into nothing. Sometimes it was easier to just start from scratch than it was to keep building on top of something irreparably broken.“ Many, I imagine, would agree. So this is a book about addiction, fathers and sons, mountain fires, loss of loved ones, drug busts. It’s populated with characters that jump off the page, including a female dog named Tommy Two-Ton. It’s written with heart and guts, and will challenge your own. It’s brilliant. A must-read.

WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN by author David Joy is a novel that takes place in a rural Appalachia area of North Carolina, and is the story of Raymond, a widowed man who lives a simple live in his modest home and prefers to live a life of solitude that has been made more difficult due to the seemingly hopeless addiction of his son who has recently broke into his home again to steal items to sell to finance his need for heroin, and Ray seems to accept that his son seems incapable or unwilling to escape his addiction in spite of the years of financial and mental strain that has affected his mother and father for several years both mentally and financially, and includes several failed rehab stints.

Ray confronts a local tough who’s a dealer, and pays off his son’s debt with the last money he has to save his son’s life, and issues a threat to the dealer that if he sells any more dope to his son, he will pay for it with his life, which the dealer laughs off and informs Ray he is only a part of a much larger operation that Ray wouldn’t stand a chance against.

Denny, Ray’s addicted son, inevitably overdoses on heroin that has come from the same source, and Ray makes good on his threat to exact revenge on the dealer that touches off a chain of events that places him in harm’s way and leads to a violent game of cat and mouse.

Can Ray bring down the large criminal organization that he feels is responsible for the effect it has had on not only his son, but the entire community? Will he find closure if he’s successful in doing what seems incredibly in the face of overwhelming odds against him?

David Joy is a very fine writer, and all of his books that I’ve read beginning with “WHERE ALL LIGHT TENDS TO GO” are wonderful novels that illustrate the surroundings in the rural settings they take place in, and provide a window into the thoughts of the characters in his stories that capture their hopes and dreams, along with their ability to rise above their circumstances, making it possible to feel the complexity of the situations faced by seemingly simple people who possess a depth and understanding sometimes only known to themselves.

I can’t say enough good things about the author and his books, and I only regret that I become so drawn into his novels that I fail to capture individual quotable sentences and paragraphs that are priceless; but thankfully others have done so and I’d recommend reading reviews by others that include them.

Needless to say, even though I’ve just recently finished this book I’ll be anxiously awaiting the next novel written by David Joy.

5 stars.